Short Term Memory Loss – What You Must Know

Short term memory loss CAN be managed!

Often enacted in the melodramatic scenes of the daily soaps and most of the movies, the concept of short term memory loss is not a stranger. However, many of us, in our daily lives , take it as a casual thing , but those who experience might be afraid of being prone to such an “illness”.

Prior to all, what do we understand by the term “Memory”? The dictionary tells us that it is “The mental capacity to store and remember information. To say it in easy words, it is the information our brain stores time to time. And losing the saved information is termed as “Memory loss”.

Memory loss is not a heavy term, and people may get misguided in fear. But, it is to be noted that Memory loss is a potential Alzheimer, and if the symptoms turn out to be pretty serious, take the

“Wake-up call” at the right time.

Types of Memory Loss:

Short term memory loss

Long term memory loss

The memory which is instantaneous or of the present thought, if eroded is called short term memory loss. Whereas, when we forget the basic moments, the identity and the personal information which was continuously being saved since birth, it is called Long term memory loss.

In this article, we shall confine our discussion to “short term memory loss”- STML.

Let me brief you with a school incident, where, in primary classes, my classmates used to tease each other with this tag STML and I used to wonder about its meaning. On further inquiry, I came to know its significance. But, that was merely a tease and didn’t have any existence.

Rather than focusing on over-exploitation of the term let us focus on it practically. Do not confuse mild forgetting habits with short term memory loss. Forgetting a person’s name by mistake is a mild forgetting habit, whereas losing the way to home even being near to it is short term memory loss.

We may often enter the room and forget the reason of being there. We usually open the refrigerator and forget what actually we were going to take from it. This is not exactly short term memory loss; however, it may gradually lead to it.

Understanding the causes will make us learn more about it.

The Causes of Short Term Memory Loss

Causes may vary from individual to individual. This is not a disease caused neither by pathogen nor due to some biological activity.

The causes can be classified as under:

Internal influences

External influences

Internal Influences:

a) Stress and depression: Excess of fatigue, stress and tiredness cause a physical stress in our mind, which in physics we call “Tension”. In order to deal with this tension, people take anti-depressants, sleeping pills, anti-anxiety medicines, tranquilizers and many other medications, which has detrimental effect on our nervous system.

b) Medication: Excessive medication given during treatments of many health issues and surgeries also brings down the proper functioning of the brain.

c) Sleep deprivation: Our body works whole day on the instructions of our brain. If our body needs rest, our brain needs some rest period as well. Although the brain never stops or pauses its work, it completely deserves A sleeping break. Improper sleep leads to distractions and absence of mind during work.

External Influences:

a) Alcohol , tobacco and drug use.

b) Smoking : Smoking interferes with the supply of oxygen to the brain, causing it to dysfunction.

c) Nutritional deficiency: Deficiency of Vitamin D and vitamin B has been found to be linked to depression and dementia.

Magnesium is referred to as stress antidote-“the most powerful relaxation mineral that exists”- Hence, its intake needs to be balanced.

d) Sudden Blow to head:Sudden blows to head or any head injury directly affects the skull and brain underneath it.

If asked to be located, short term memory loss occurs in the frontal lobe of cerebral region.

Diagnosis can be done by primary checkup by the doctor, with testing the patient’s memory skills. It may be followed with blood tests and nutritive deficiency identification tests in order to identify the cause. Then, accordingly, the treatment could be further done.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computerized Tomography (CT) scan and EEG could be done to measure electrical activity of the brain.

Some easy ways, which could be adopted, in order to prevent STML are mentioned below:

Qualitative and Quantitative Sleep is necessary.

A healthy diet with proper proportion of the “brainy” vitamins and minerals.

Psychological problems could be dealt with the help of counselor or a psychologist.

Antidepressants and anti-stress medicines should be taken in limited amounts.

And, if you could shoo away your stress problems and SMILE, then what else could be better my friend? 🙂